


The Crup

by Delphi



Series: Fantastic Beasts [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chronic Pain, Comfort, Dogs, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Severus pet-sits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crup

Severus became aware that he was being followed sometime after leaving the library on Saturday afternoon. He could not say how long he had been shadowed through the courtyards or the central corridors, but when he descended into the quiet of the dungeons, he heard the unmistakable scuffle of small, odd footsteps behind him.

He halted abruptly and spun around. The passageway was empty.

"Who's there?" he said sternly.

When no malingering student presented themselves, Severus narrowed his eyes.

"I suggest you show yourself," he said, his voice softening to a near-kindly tone that quite clearly communicated that the infraction had already been committed and adjudicated, and that the culprit need only decide how long a detention they had volunteered for.

Another strange scuffle sounded, and then a distinct clicking, such as of small, sharp pins against stone. Subsequently, a black nose and white muzzle poked around the corner. They were followed by a set of half-pricked ears and then a length of wiry fur capped with a drooping bob-tail.

Silvanus's crup regarded him with large, aggrieved eyes. Its tail wagged twice, half-heartedly, and then drooped again.

"What do you want?" Severus asked. He glanced about awkwardly, in case someone had heard him address the creature. Never having owned a familiar, or any pet at all, he was not quite certain how much they could understand.

The crup heaved a sigh and bowed down briefly before fixing him once again with an expectant expression.

"Where's your master?" Severus approached the crup cautiously and peered around the corner. Silvanus was nowhere in sight.

Unhelpfully, the crup skittered around his ankles and whined.

Severus prodded the crup with the tip of his boot. "Go away."

The crup whined again, and Severus felt a prickle of unease. The creature was no intrepid Alsatian informing the authorities of wayward children tumbled down mine shafts, but it was likewise rarely far from Silvanus's side.

"I'm taking you back where you belong," Severus said, feeling faintly ridiculous at having continued the conversation.

Nonetheless, the crup followed him amenably enough as he proceeded to Silvanus's rooms, bounding ahead of Severus on the stairs and then trotting along behind him down the corridor.

Severus knocked smartly on the door. There was no reply, but he thought he heard muffled movement inside. He tried the doorknob and found it locked. He knocked again.

"I'm not in!" Silvanus called out from far within the apartments.

Had he sounded merely distracted, Severus might have let it lie. It was Saturday, after all, and that mid-term period where they were all up to their elbows in marking. There was a strained note to his voice, however—an uncharacteristically ill-tempered edge that made Severus hesitate.

The crup slipped in via the little dog-door and then poked its nose back out as if it expected Severus to follow through the miniature entrance.

Severus supposed he could have tried knocking again, but he was already out of sorts at the prospect of losing precious minutes of his Saturday. And, perhaps, he was just slightly concerned. 

He crossly got down on his knees, setting his books aside, and reached through the dog-door with wand in hand. Silvanus really was worryingly lax about security. A simple _alohomora_ was enough to turn the latch, and Severus got back to his feet and stalked inside. 

The reek of cannabis smoke was immediately assaultive. Severus wrinkled his nose as he peered around the empty sitting room. A suspicious number of half-empty teacups were amassed on the end table for someone who usually drew a very firm line between inorganic clutter and organic mess. A strange but half-familiar and mechanical sound could be heard from the bedroom. 

He approached, the crup creeping along behind him. Silvanus's bedroom door was slightly ajar, and through the crack, he could see the source of the odd sound: the record player had been set up atop the dresser and had reached the end of a recording, whooping softly to itself as it sought the groove. Still wielding his wand, Severus cautiously nudged the door open the rest of the way with his foot. Then he blinked.

"You look terrible." The words were bluntly out of his mouth before he could edit them.

Silvanus lay on the bed, quite naked, which under normal circumstances might have been a mildly diverting sight, but at present was disconcerting. His eyes were bright and glassy, and his hair was stuck to his brow with sweat. Still, he managed to twist his mouth into a wry smile and lift his head. 

"I can always count on you for accuracy, darling."

"Don't call me darling," Severus said, more out of reflex than anything else. His gaze took in the fag-ends and ash in yet another teacup. The fire had been built up, and it was sweltering. "Are you ill?"

Silvanus waved his hand vaguely. "My legs hurt." 

Severus looked down, expecting to see a worsening of the usual red lines that marked where Silvanus's prostheses met his flesh, but his skin was unmarred.

"Not those bits," Silvanus said, his head dropping back onto the pillow. "The rest of them. Every bloody year, the first time it rains..."

Severus shifted uncomfortably. He put his wand back in his pocket. "Have you taken anything? I have a few painkillers...I could brew something."

Silvanus rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes and shook his head. "I can't. They make me dull. I'd rather abide with the pain than that damnable dullness."

The crup whimpered and leapt up onto the bed.

"Mouse!" Silvanus hissed, flinching as though the counterpane were sandpaper against his skin. He gritted his teeth and then modulated his voice with what sounded like great effort. "Would you please stay off the bed?"

Severus took hold of the creature. It was surprisingly heavy, dangling limply as he held it at arm's length until he could set it down. Once on the floor, the crup retreated behind his legs.

Silvanus frowned unhappily. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good company at the moment, I'm afraid."

"Obviously," Severus said. He averted his gaze. He very much did not wish to be here. "Do you...need anything?"

"No," Silvanus said. "That's very kind of you to ask, but everything's well in hand. It will pass."

"Well...good." Severus turned to take his leave. He set one foot across the threshold and then paused, glancing back.

The crup lay flat on the floor, chin mournfully set upon the stones. Silvanus was breathing very deeply and deliberately, his fists clenched and his throat bobbing with a hard swallow.

Severus felt his jaw set in annoyance. Bastard.

He stormed into the outer apartments and set about refilling the kettle, slamming cupboards and he hunted for the tea leaves. He returned with the teapot and a cup and set both on the nightstand with a sour thump, and then he jerked his chin towards the whooping record player. "On or off?"

Silvanus looked at him silently for a moment and then said, quietly, "On. If it isn't any trouble."

It took Severus two failed attempts to remember how to start a record playing, but eventually the dratted thing caught and the mournful sound of trumpets and the creaky voice of an equally mournful woman softly spread through the room.

"Does anyone need to be notified?" Severus asked stiffly, watching the black disc revolve.

"No," Silvanus said. He shifted on the bed, his breathing seeming to groan along with the mattress. "I'll send a note to Minerva if Wilhelmina needs to be called in for Monday."

Severus had no idea who Wilhelmina was, but her existence sounded reassuring. "All right."

Then he snatched up the disgusting makeshift ashtray and left before Silvanus could make things worse by thanking him. To his consternation, the crup followed.

"Argos, you are not," Severus muttered as the crup trotted after him down the corridor.

The animal gave no sign of understanding, but followed him all the way back to his rooms, where it curled up unhappily under the desk. Severus went about his marking and lesson planning and did his best to ignore the creature. The day passed slowly, and Severus's thoughts wandered every time the crup shifted at his feet, or sighed, or scratched at the door to be let out to relieve itself.

At dinner, Severus picked sullenly at his plate, and it was largely his lack of appetite that drove him to wrap some chicken in a napkin and slip it into his pocket. Waste not, want not. He looked up the table to find the headmaster regarding him with a knowing smile, which he decided was a bluff for intense curiosity. He left early and was on watch for anyone following him until he was safely ensconced in his rooms.

"Your master is an idiot," he declared to the crup, lying down on the sofa and watching it devour the chicken.

The crup did not reply, too busy stuffing its face.

"We have a nurse. And opiates exist for a reason."

He could not quite muster the proper heat to his voice, however. He himself did not care to visit Madam Pomfrey as anything but a colleague in brewing, and he had no better tolerance for enforced sedation.

"Idiot," he said again, thinking about pain and ghosts and what would happen if he cut his arm off. 

As if called, the crup jumped onto the sofa.

"Oof!" Severus winced as two paws dug into his stomach. "Get off."

The crup lay down flat instead, its chin on Severus's chest. It whined, its dark eyes wide and pathetic. The stupid creature had no understanding, Severus reflected. It probably thought Silvanus was dying, or dead, and its feeble brain could dwell on nothing but worry.

"Fine," he said, not inclined to move for a while anyhow. "But don't get comfortable."

It was nearly forty-eight hours before Silvanus returned to claim the beast.

The crup provided early warning, well ahead of the time that Severus caught the distant click-thump of Silvanus's walking stick and gait. Severus's bedclothes exploded in a flurry of blankets as the crup tore out of the sorry den it had constructed and raced to the door, where it executed a series of vertical leaps that brought it as high as the latch.

"Shoo." Severus motioned it aside. It ran in frantic circles, whining eagerly under its breath as he opened the door and peered out.

"Hello," Silvanus called, giving a small wave as he made his way down the corridor. He looked tired and wan, even in the warm torchlight of the dungeons, but he was walking ably. "I've come to negotiate for the release of my familiar."

"Take it," Severus said as the crup squeezed past him and streaked out into the corridor. It stopped barely short of bowling Silvanus over and capered around him with a series of excited yips. "Take it away now."

Silvanus clucked his tongue, halting in front of the door and letting the crup leap up into his arms. He cradled it, fondly scratching its ears as it sniffed and licked him. "Pity. Here I was willing to offer sexual favours for Mouse's safe return."

Severus glanced up and down the corridor to make certain that no sharp-eared students were passing and then stepped back, ushering Silvanus inside. "What sort of sexual favours?"

"Oh, filthy ones," Silvanus declared cheerfully, making his way to the sofa, where he sat down heavily with the crup squirming in his arms. "Some of them might even have been illegal, or at least in violation of the non-thaumaturgic laws of physics. I trust Mouse wasn't any trouble?"

Severus snorted and sat down. Silvanus was apparently well enough to tease, but the shadows under his eyes suggested that he was not well enough to drag into the bedroom and be made to answer for it. Besides, the bloody crup probably wouldn't leave them alone.

"She was a menace," Severus said. "For which you owe me every favour you were prepared to bargain with."

Silvanus smiled tiredly and leaned against Severus's shoulder. "Duly noted."

Minor shifting and rearranging was required, and Severus ended up with his arm around Silvanus. Despite Silvanus's very plausible assertions that, as he put it, casual touch was a basic primate need divorced entirely from performative romantic expressions, the business of pre-coital contact was still...conspicuous.

Severus cleared his throat. "Did you make it to class today?"

He in fact already knew that Silvanus had. He had happened to wander past the Care of Magical Creatures classroom at eleven and had subsequently happened to hear Silvanus declaiming on the topic of dragons.

"Mm," Silvanus said, his eyelids already looking heavy. "I had the students read aloud from the textbook and then told them which bits were rubbish. That book is older than I am."

"It's a good thing I never bothered with your class, then," Severus said. He leaned back a little, getting more comfortable. Silvanus reclined with him, and the crup greedily stretched out across both their laps.

Silvanus scratched the crup's scruff. Its stubby tail wagged rapturously. "I really am grateful for you looking after Mouse. I didn't mean to impose. She usually just sulks in the sitting room until I'm back on my feet."

"She seemed..." He considered the word 'concerned' and then, hesitant to ascribe such higher thinking to the beast, settled on: "...agitated."

"Sorry, old girl," Silvanus said, rubbing a russet ear between thumb and forefinger.

Severus had to place a hand on the crup's back to stop its ecstatic wiggling.

"Have you ever kept an animal?" Silvanus asked, his gaze on Severus's hand.

"No." Severus paused. "A cat, briefly, when I was a boy."

It hadn't been a familiar—only a mud-coloured moggy that Severus, being five or so when his mother had started letting it in the back door, had been too rough with. It had finally run off for good two years later after being clipped with a stray teacup during one of his parents' rows.

"A cat," Silvanus mused, closing his eyes. "I would think a ferret might suit you better. Or a nice little adder."

"No," Severus said flatly, aware that he was having this conversation with someone capable of leaving such a creature in his staff room postbox.

"A Brazillian Black tarantula? Maybe a rhinoceros beetle?"

"No."

"Ah," Silvanus sighed, his voice growing languid with sleep. "Just as well. We wouldn't want Mouse to be jealous."

Severus looked down sceptically. The crup had nestled in against its master, its muzzle tucked tenderly under Silvanus's hand and its hindquarters parked unceremoniously on Severus's lap.

"If you say so," Severus said, taking more of Silvanus's weight against him and stoically bearing up under being relegated to the status of mattress.

Silvanus had, he decided, been rather too much at the cannabis.


End file.
